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Saturday, August 23, 2014

What Grinds My Gears: The ALS Bucket Challenge

I know this is a little delayed, but I feel the need to rant about the ALS challenge -- and apparently, I'm not the only one. I have seen far too many dumb ice bucket videos. The only thing happening in most of these videos is water being poured over someone and "challenging"three people. ALS isn't even mentioned half the time and I would be willing to bet 75% of the people on my Facebook/Instagram could not even tell you what ALS is. Even Steve-O is criticizing it. Steve-O wrote on his Facebook “The fact that not more than fifteen million dollars has been raised is a tragedy. It's tragic because I don't think many of those celebrities even bothered to mention how or where to donate money for ALS research. Most of them just poured water over their heads and named three random people, without including any 'call to action' which actually benefits victims of ALS at all.” He goes on to say that he is educating himself about the disease and donated $1,000.

This is really frustrating for me because, as someone who deals with rare and chronic pain, I would rather have real awareness than mass amounts of money. I don't understand why the challenge has to be pouring ice water on your head, when you could have an all around win-win, like #bloodnomination. If you think about how beneficial this is, the social media whores of the world can take their viral picture donating blood and it will actually help people with cancer. Everyone wins.

I get that the Ice Bucket Challenge has generated a lot of money and I think that's great, but if you think about all the celebrities that are doing this, there should be so much more donated. It truly disgusts me that donating is seen as the "consequence". Maybe you don't have $100 to donate, but at least donate something. I donated to the American Chronic Pain Association too when I was "challenged."

Start video at 1:58.

I see videos like this and can't help but feel for him. I can't imagine how much that much truly suck and I really can't imagine why people feel like pouring water over their head would be more helpful than finding out what ALS actually is and donating to the cause because of it.